A Proposal for Christmas. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ Soft was definitely not the word. Not where Holly Llewellyn was concerned.

      * * *

      The day was a full and busy one, but it took forever to pass, all the same. Instead of thinking about her newspaper column, as she should have been, every turn of Holly’s mind seemed to lead to David Goddard.

      Elaine was gathering together the leaves of the manuscript she had been working on, preparing to leave. “What time is the hunk coming over?” she asked.

      Color leaped into Holly’s cheeks and pounded there. “What hunk?” she asked tightly, a little annoyed that Elaine could read her preoccupation so easily.

      “Don’t give me that. I’m talking about your date with David Goddard and you know it. What are you serving? What are you wearing? Do you want me to take Toby home with me for the evening?”

      “Once your questions start coming, there’s no stopping them, is there?” Holly countered, still flushed. She took the disk containing her pitiful effort at a cooking column from the computer and shut off the machine with an angry flourish.

      Elaine was not intimidated, but she did back off just a little. “I could take Toby home,” she offered again. “Roy and I enjoy him so much, and—”

      “Toby is staying right here!”

      “Why? Do you need him as a buffer, Holly?”

      Holly had been halfway out of her chair; now she sagged back into it. “I wouldn’t use Toby that way, Elaine,” she said, but the doubt in her voice bothered her.

      “It’s all right, you know, to want time alone with an attractive man. It’s not going to scar Toby’s psyche or anything.”

      In spite of herself, Holly chuckled. Elaine did have a way of lightening a situation. “Last night,” she confessed after a few moments of reflection, “David kissed me.”

      “So?”

      “So it was weird, Elaine. The earth moved. Bells chimed. All the corny stuff you see in movies and read about in books—it all happened.”

      Elaine beamed. “That’s great!”

      “It is not,” Holly insisted, her face set and serious again. “It’s terrible. That man is dangerous, Elaine.”

      “Dangerous? Why?”

      Now Holly felt foolish and she couldn’t quite bring herself to meet her friend’s eyes. “He’s not like Skyler. He’s—”

      “Thank God for small favors.”

      Holly was putting her computer disk into its paper folder, turning off the printer, clearing her desk. Anything to keep from looking directly at Elaine. “You don’t like Skyler, do you? I can understand why Toby doesn’t, but you should.”

      “He’s all right,” Elaine conceded with a heavy and somewhat dramatic sigh. “It’s just that he’s so, well, you know, safe. Boring.”

      “He’s reliable, that’s what he is,” defended Holly. “I might marry him.”

      “If you do, you’re crazy. You don’t love Skyler, Holly.”

      “How do you know?” Holly demanded. But she wished with all her heart that she could love Skyler, truly want him. Even need him. It made her mad that she couldn’t.

      “If you loved him, ninny-brain, you wouldn’t be all hot and bothered because David Goddard is coming to dinner. You haven’t thought straight all day.”

      Holly slumped. “I’m not ‘hot and bothered’!” she lied in a plaintive wail.

      Elaine only laughed. “Let me take Toby home with me. Please? I promise to give him the most nutritionally balanced TV dinner in the freezer, and I’ll bring him home after your class lets out.”

      Holly hadn’t even thought about the class. Dear Lord, that was one more thing to add to the worries she already had, like what she was going to serve David Goddard for dinner and what she was going to wear. She wanted to look attractive, but not predatory....

      It was as though, by their long and friendly association, Elaine had learned to look right inside Holly’s brain and read her every thought. “Wear something sexy. Leopard skin, maybe.”

      Holly laughed. “Leopard skin? This is a quiet, casual dinner, not a movie about barbarians! And I have no desire to look ‘sexy.’”

      “Pity,” Elaine said, looking entirely serious. “A woman ought to wear something sort of Frederick’s-of-Hollywoodish once in a while.”

      Holly only shook her head, amazed. She wanted to ask if Elaine herself ever wore such garments but didn’t quite dare.

      “Hey, Tobe!” Elaine yelled, shaking off the look of deep thought, beaming again. “Come on! You’re coming home with me tonight!”

      The TV, blaring in the family room, went silent. The next sound, in fact, was a little boy’s whoop of delight. Toby bounded into the room, already struggling into his jacket, his face shining. “Do you think Uncle Roy will play Donkey Kong with me?”

      Elaine gave the child a conspiratorial smile. “Yes. But you must promise to let him beat you at least once.”

      Toby squared his small shoulders manfully and looked charitably reluctant. “Oh, all right. But just once.”

      There was a whoosh of goodbyes, Toby planting a quick, wet kiss on Holly’s cheek, and then a swirl of cold air when the back door was opened. And they were gone.

      Holly sighed, and as an aching sense of loneliness grasped her, she took herself firmly in hand. “Frederick’s of Hollywood!” she muttered irritably as she went to the freezer to take out falafel and couscous experiments from last week’s chapter of her new cookbook.

      She slammed the foil-wrapped packages down on the countertop, near the sink. If David Goddard didn’t like eating experiments, the heck with him. What did he think this place was, a restaurant? Why, if he said one single word, she would...she would...

      Holly sighed. Who was she kidding? She put the foil packages back into the freezer and took out the special beef stroganoff she’d been saving in case Skyler’s parents decided to come to Spokane on one of their infrequent visits.

      After straightening the kitchen and throwing together a green salad, she raced upstairs to take a shower and exchange her jeans and madras shirt for something more—more what? Sexy?

      Still dripping from her shower, wrapped only in a bright pink bath sheet, Holly shoved the white cashmere suit back into the closet. It was too clingy, that was all. Entirely too clingy.

      She brought out a flowing blue dress, interwoven with tiny silver threads, that she’d picked up in Iran only the month before. Even then she’d had no idea where she would wear such a thing, but she hadn’t been able to resist the gown’s quiet elegance.

      She returned that garment to the closet, too. After all, it had that deep neckline and it was too formal. Whatever she chose would have to do for the cooking class she had СКАЧАТЬ